


This Black Ceiling

by celestialskiff



Category: Loveless
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-04
Updated: 2010-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-13 12:34:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialskiff/pseuds/celestialskiff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Warning: rape and child abuse.</b> Sometimes Soubi misses his ears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Black Ceiling

No one ever told Soubi that loosing his ears would hurt so much. Since one of the other young fighters had explained to him what having sex actually meant, he'd thought that it must be uncomfortable, if not downright painful, but he had not considered what it would cost him for his ears to be removed from his skin.

Ritsu had made it very clear that pain of having sex was something Soubi would soon experience. Soubi was getting more and more used to pain every day. He was getting used to having his ears pulled and his tail tugged by the other fighters if he let his guard down even for a moment. He was also getting used to the pain in his hand when he hit someone and the pain in his body when he was hit in return. He was getting used to the atmosphere in the school: there was no struggle to be popular, here the struggle was simply to remain alive.

He didn't think any longer about living with his parents. It made the hurt worse. Sometimes, when he woke up, he would remember waking in a different room, a quiet room full of warm light. He would remember staring at a ceiling bright with a pattern of stars, and the sound of music playing in a different room. As soon as he thought about the music he would wake up properly and push all thoughts of that room out of his head.

Soubi was getting used to the pain Ritsu inflicted on him too. He still hated pain, feared it and dreaded it more than anything in the world, but he learnt he could get used to fear and dread too. Ritsu liked to hurt Soubi in ways that were hard to see, but in ways Soubi would feel for days. He liked to make little cuts in the soft places on Soubi's body, little cuts on the soft skin between his fingers and toes or behind his ears; worse, he would sometimes pull a razor blade across the corners of Soubi's mouth or even at the sides of his tongue. It would sting for days, weeks.

He would pull Soubi's tail so hard Soubi would think he was going to pull it right off, and the pain would travel down Soubi's spine and crunch at the back of his neck. Ritsu would whisper that he liked Soubi's tail, that he would be sorry when Soubi lost it. He liked to run the razor blade lightly, almost tenderly, over the soft skin around Soubi's anus, and over the even more tender skin of his genitals. He rarely, if ever, broke the skin, but Soubi had to force himself to be perfectly still, to endure, while Ritsu played with him.

So by the time Soubi lost his ears and tail he had grown to expect pain at Ritsu's hands, but that didn't mean he was prepared for his. He thought the pain of Ritsu's cock in him was more than he could stand: the utter wrongness of it in such an intimate place, the feeling of it stretching his body past its limits. He thought he had learnt to hold pain silently, but he found that he couldn't hold this pain, that he was shouting and muttering and begging into the dark room until Ritsu slapped him across the face and then shoved some foul smelling cloth into Soubi's mouth. Soubi tried not to retch.

Tears ran down his face and over his jawline and he ground his teeth together hard. It was impossible to distance himself from the feeling of Ritsu fucking him. He could concentrate on nothing but his naked skin and the penis thrusting into his flesh again and again and again. Ritsu was gripping him by his hair, his body dwarfing Soubi's, and as the penis touched parts of Soubi that had never been touched before Soubi felt like Ritsu was breaking through his softly coiled internal organs, stabbing them until Soubi's intestines were in matted ribbons.

Then Ritsu grabbed his ears and tugged, and it hurt more than anything in the world, more than the saliva and bile trickling past the gag and out the corners of his mouth, more than the pain inside him, more than all those hands on his skin and those mornings waking up and knowing he was still here. Ritsu was ripping a part of Soubi's body off, and it hurt like that sounds. Soubi felt everything slipping away from him; there was a merciful, merciful blackness beneath his eyelids.

Afterwards, Ritsu took the gag out and washed his face with a warm cloth, and Soubi retched and spat. Then he stroked Soubi's head and rearranged his hair over the places where Soubi's ears had once been. He sat Soubi up, and the pain in Soubi's lower body hummed right through his head like white noise, and he couldn't concentrate on anything for a moment. And then, on the bed beside him, he saw his ears and tail neatly coiled around each other. The sight of them there, and not on his skin, made him feel violently sick. He put his hands over his mouth and bit it, easing the urge away.

“Do you want them?” Ritsu said. “Some women like to keep them mouldering away in their underwear drawer for the rest of their lives.”

The thought was horrible. Soubi shook his head. He thought he could feel something oozing out of his anus and was too scared to move.

“I'll get rid of them, then,” Ritsu said. He knelt by Soubi and gently stroked his hair again, running it through his fingers. It was the most tender thing Soubi could remember experiencing. He didn't hate Ritsu. As he looked at him, it didn't even seem strange to him that he did not.

Later, when he was in the bathroom letting spunk and shit trickle out of his sore body he felt sure that Ritsu would do this again, and he whimpered to himself in the bright room.

*

Later Kio told him it didn't have to hurt like that. He told him that the ears and tail did not have to be ripped from his skin like an arm being torn off. He said his own had been removed gently, after sex, and it had hurt like hair being tugged out, or like cold hands on aching, feverish skin.

“Not as bad at the tattoo,” Kio said.

Kio didn't seem to feel the loss of the ears like Soubi did. He did not put his hands to the crown of his head and search for the place where they had once been in his hair, and search, and search, and find only smooth skin.

Ritsu and Seimei had left their own marks on Soubi's skin. There were scars between all of his fingers, and a strange, discoloured line on his tongue, and there were scars on his ass and on his upper thighs. There were scars beneath his shoulder blades, and scars wound round his throat. He hated pain, but the scars reminded him not of pain, but that he was owned. These were Seimei's legs, and Seimei's arms and Seimei's marks on his skin. Ritsu had never owned him, but his scars remained on Soubi's body, and that was a kind of ownership too.

The loss of his ears was accentuated by the lack of scars. He had nothing to show that they had once been there except the memory of stroking the soft fur between his fingers, the memory of their colour and their shape.

“Does that mean you're going to take my ears?” Ritsuka had asked, and he'd said not now, but he did not think he could ever take that from Ristuka. He never wanted to see pain in Ristuka's face; he never wanted to see Ritsuka touching the crown of his head and searching for ears that were not, could not, be there.

After that they did not even discuss it. Soubi was happy when Risuka allowed himself to be held, when he could rest his head by Ristuka's on a pillow, when he could gather Ristuka in his arms and hold him gently against his chest and feel the shape of his bones against him. He would take Ristuka's tail in his hand and gently, liquidly, stroke it between his fingers, and he would feel Ritsuka warm against his skin.

Ritsuka never asked how he lost his ears, but Soubi suspected someone had told him. He was glad that they did not discuss it, because he did not want to tell Ritsuka any more about Ritsu than he had to. Sometimes he would touch the wounds on Ristuka's skin (the bandaged wrists and the cuts on his face), and think perhaps Ritsuka would understand better than anyone.

Once, after a night with Ritsuka, he painted a room diffused with golden light, a room with stars on the ceiling, a room which held the promise of distant music. He painted it almost in a dream, because he thought he had forgotten this room. Kio looked at it for a long time.

“It's a good painting,” Kio said.

“I know,” Soubi said, watching him, and waiting. But Kio only gave him a surprisingly piercing look and began to talk about something else.

*

The house smelt of turpentine and linseed after a day of painting when Ritsuka let himself in. Soubi greeted him with enthusiasm, but continued cleaning his brushes in white spirits, his fingers stinging slightly in the chemicals.

Ritsuka limped to a chair and sat down heavily. Soubi didn't ask him if he was hurt: he could tell from his movements that he was. He finished the brushes briskly and left them by the sink. An arc of blue paint was still bright on the skin halfway up his forearm, but Soubi ignored it. He went to Risuka and knelt by his side in the chair.

“Soubi,” Ritsuka said. He gently put his hand on the crown of Soubi's head for a moment, and Soubi shivered slightly at the touch.

“How badly are you hurt?” Soubi asked.

“Not very,” Ritsuka said, and he allowed Soubi to roll up his sleeves and examine the bruises on his arms. There were cuts on his legs from where he had fallen onto a broken glass, and Soubi cleaned those carefully. He no longer reminded Ritsuka that he did not have to go back. It only upset and irritated him, and Soubi did not want to make Ritsuka feel either of those things.

He stroked Ritsuka's ears gently, and Ritsuka allowed his head to loll to one side so that it rested on Soubi's abdomen.

“Soubi,” Ritsuka said. “When are you going to take my ears?”

Soubi knelt down so he was at Ristuka's eyes level. “Never, unless you want me to.”

“Does it hurt?” Ritsuka said. They did not speak of pain often. Soubi thought Ritsuka handled pain with more grace than he did, but then Soubi thought Ritsuka did everything with more grace than he himself was capable of.

“More than anything,” Soubi answered honestly.

They were at eye level so Ritsuka could reach out easily and touch Soubi's soft hair with his left hand, touch and stroke the scalp as Soubi had often done.

“It doesn't leave a mark,” Soubi said gently. “Once they're gone, they're just gone.”

“Oh,” Ritsuka said. He looked like he wanted to ask more questions, but he didn't. He rested his head on Soubi's shoulder and Soubi breathed in his fresh smell.

“Soubi,” Ristuka said. “I'm sorry it hurt.”

Soubi drew him close, closer. His canvas, drying slowly across the room, was covered in butterflies, butterflies, butterflies. “What should I paint?” he asked.

“Whatever you like,” Ritsuka said. “Anything but me, because that would be embarrassing.”

*

Soubi slept without dreaming, and the next day he painted red flowers and distant mountains and carousels, and if he thought about anyone, he thought about Ritsuka, not about Seimei, and not about Ritsu. But it may have been that, as he added golden highlights to the peaks of the mountains, he thought only about himself.


End file.
